After a day’s reprieve of no new local cases, China on Tuesday registered four new symptomatic infections while health authorities stepped up vigilance and vaccination drives.Two of the cases were discovered in Shanghai, one in the eastern province...

Thousands of people were still crowding around Kabul airport on Wednesday morning in the hope of getting on an evacuation flight out of Afghanistan, videos on social media showed.Video footage and photos showed hundreds of Afghans waiting in a moat o...

A tantalising aroma of sizzling kebabs and freshly baked bread wafts from the hot clay ovens of the dozen or so eateries in what has been dubbed Little Afghanistan, a cluster of around 100 Afghan refugee families in the Lajpat Nagar neighbourhood of ...

A Chinese Olympic champion publicly criticised the quality of her gold medal on Monday and posted photos online that appear to show it peeling.Zhu Xueying, who won the trampoline gymnastics event, posted three photos on Weibo of the medal that appear...

A Hong Kong student has been sentenced to more than two years in jail for rioting during the chaos of last year’s banned candlelight vigil marking the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.Tsang King-lun pleaded guilty at the District Court on Wednesday ...

Former Chadian president Hissene Habre, who was serving a life term in Senegal for crimes against humanity, died from Covid-19 on Tuesday aged 79.Chad’s consulate said that the former dictator had succumbed to coronavirus in Dakar’s main hospital...

The United States will donate an additional 1 million coronavirus vaccines to Vietnam, US Vice-President Kamala Harris said on Wednesday during her trip to Hanoi, as she pledged to aid the Southeast Asian nation in boosting its inoculation rates.T...

Hong Kong’s young people should embrace the work opportunities offered by mainland China, as their language skills and international outlook give them unique strengths when competing with their counterparts over the border, according to a senior Be...

A 10-minute leaked video showing a group of Thai police officers allegedly manhandling a drug suspect by putting a plastic bag over his head to extort money from him has gone viral, sparking outrage on social media.Thailand’s police chief Pol Gen S...

A new programme offering walk-in coronavirus vaccinations to Hong Kong students aged 12 and older will launch on Friday in a bid to encourage the young to get jabbed before their summer holiday ends.The new arrangement was unveiled as infectious dise...

TikTok, the hit short video app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, is expanding its online retail efforts through a partnership with Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify that will allow US and UK users to buy directly through the app.Shopify merchants wi...

A Philippine beauty queen on Wednesday married a local politician twice her age in the southern province of Maguindanao, which is in the Muslim-majority region of Bangsamoro. It was the culmination of a relationship that has become a source of contro...

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday stuck by his plan to remove the nearly 6,000 US troops from Afghanistan by the end of August, contingent on whether the Taliban cooperates to allow the evacuation of more Americans and their Afghan allies.Biden annou...

China reopened a key terminal at the world’s third-busiest cargo port on Wednesday, after a shutdown to control the coronavirus caused major backlogs elsewhere and worsened already extended delays caused by the pandemic.The halt at the eastern Ning...

Algeria cut diplomatic relations with Morocco on Tuesday, citing what it called hostile actions by its most populous neighbour with which it has had strained relations for decades.Speaking at a news conference in Algiers, Foreign Minister Ramdane Lam...

Hong Kong national security police are investigating the umbrella group behind the annual vigil marking the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown for alleged collusion with foreign forces, a senior force insider has said.Letters have been sent to 12 member...

US Vice-President Kamala Harris’ flight from Singapore to Vietnam on Tuesday took off three hours later than scheduled, after concerns about an “anomalous health incident” in Hanoi.The US State Department has frequently used that phrase to desc...

China’s home prices are falling in districts where the most prestigious schools are located, as efforts by local authorities to tamp down the home-buying frenzy in school districts are paying off.A home in Futian, the seat of Shenzhen’s municipal...

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has told China his country will not enter an alliance to confront Beijing, before he meets US Vice-President Kamala Harris on Wednesday.In a meeting on Tuesday with Xiong Bo, the Chinese envoy to Hanoi, Pham ...

Hong Kong customs officers have broken up a money-laundering ring accused of smuggling nearly HK$170 million (US$21.8 million) in criminal proceeds out of the city over three months via the world’s longest sea crossing, arresting five people in the...

An Arizona economic development group on Tuesday said it had made a deal with Taiwanese economic development officials aimed at making the US state more attractive to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry as the world’s biggest chip maker eyes a US$12 ...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to introduce a two-year ban on foreign homebuyers to tackle housing affordability in Canada if he’s re-elected.The proposed restriction is an attempt to cool a housing market that has soared during the Covid-1...

As US Federal Reserve officials gear up for the Jackson Hole symposium, their response to the pandemic is being criticised as risky by counterparts in Beijing who are trying to decouple China’s monetary policy from the United States.The Communist P...

Student leaders at the University of Hong Kong involved in passing a motion last month mourning the “sacrifice” of a man who stabbed a police officer are being questioned individually by school management as to how they voted, following the arres...

This week in China, a man got his 15-minutes of fame for picking up an egg with gigantic chopsticks, one Chinese province may be calling an end to an important tradition, and a man looking for love gets banned from Weibo for his strange mannerisms.No...

In August, two Chinese activists were sentenced to 15 months in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after archiving censored internet materials during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.The broadly worded criminal charge has ...

Close to 80 housing estates across Hong Kong are still priced below their peaks, even though the city’s overall lived-in home prices recently soared to a new record.Some of the developments have seen units changing hands for less than three quarter...

Award-winning Hong Kong director Kiwi Chow Kwun-wai made headlines when his latest documentary was screened at the Cannes Film Festival last month, but the recognition prompted an investor to withdraw from his next film.The 2½-hour Revolution of Our...

Hours after leaving office, scandal-tainted former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo suffered another defeat on Tuesday, losing the special Emmy Award he received last year for his daily, televised briefings on the coronavirus pandemic.The International...

The inaugural meeting on water security between Asean and the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission (MRC) last week has been hailed as a means of boosting protection of the vital waterway, amid claims that China’s activities have affected downs...

A South Korean parliamentary committee voted on Wednesday to recommend amending a law, a key step toward banning Google and Apple from forcibly charging software developers commissions on in-app purchases, the first such curb by a major economy.Apple...

China could offer farmers in Afghanistan help with alternative crops to opium poppies to try to counter threats to China posed by the Central Asian nation’s continued dependence on the illegal drug trade, Chinese analysts suggested.Trafficking in p...

Beijing’s new data privacy law will affect Hong Kong businesses and how they handle mainland consumer data, possibly requiring them to hire specialist agencies or compliance officers to manage personal data, Stephen Wong Kai-yi, the city’s former...

Beijing has so far not lived up to its promises to stanch the flow of the deadly synthetic drug fentanyl from Chinese chemical factories into the US, according to a report Tuesday by a congressional advisory panel.“China remains the primary country...

Kathy Hochul became the first female governor of New York on Tuesday and in her first hours on the job sought to bring a new sense of urgency to tackling immense problems that went unaddressed during Andrew Cuomo’s distracted final months in office...

Millions of Afghans could soon face starvation due to a combination of conflict, drought and the coronavirus pandemic, the executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday, calling on political leaders to act fast.“There’s a p...

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett departed on Tuesday for his first state visit overseas since taking office, a two-day trip to Washington to meet US President Joe Biden and discuss regional rival Iran.The newly minted prime minister’s visit t...

Over the past two decades, the Asia-Pacific region has made remarkable progress in managing disaster risk. But countries can never let down their guard. The Covid-19 pandemic, with its epicentre now in Asia, and all its tragic consequences, has expos...

An Afghan singer who has used her international fame to amplify calls for women’s rights wore an all-enveloping veil to escape her homeland as the Taliban took Kabul.Aryana Sayeed has divided her time between Turkey, Britain and Afghanistan and had...

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday reaffirmed his plan to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by August 31, rebuffing pressure from G7 countries to extend the deadline to allow further evacuations of their citizens and Afghans seeking to flee.Bi...

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have shared poignant tributes to Charlie Watts following The Rolling Stones drummer’s death aged 80.The trio had been bandmates since 1963, working together on era-defining tracks including (I Can’t Get No) Satisfac...

US troops and a small cadre of diplomats are mired in a hasty, ill-planned departure from Kabul. That’s a massive problem for China. For the past 20 years, extremism has been kept at bay despite a losing war over nation-building. When the last carg...

US President Joe Biden sent CIA director William Burns to meet Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Kabul on Monday in the highest-level official encounter since the militant group took over the Afghan capital, a US official and a source familiar wi...

Geopolitical tensions and the coronavirus are expected to challenge Beijing’s bid to further increase the global use of the yuan even after its share of China’s cross-border payments hit a record high last year.China’s cross-border settlements ...

The United States has decided against the idea of using its largest overseas military bases in South Korea and Japan to temporarily house Afghan refugees, said two sources with close knowledge of the matter.US officials “appeared to have figured ou...

China accused the United States of losing credibility in its foreign policy following its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, as US Vice-President Kamala Harris tried to reassure Asia of Washington’s commitment to the region.Harris’ trip to Sing...

US Vice-President Kamala Harris’ flight from Singapore to Vietnam was delayed by more than three hours on Tuesday because of concerns about “an anomalous health incident” in Hanoi, the State Department said.“The vice-president’s traveling d...

As the Indian government grapples with the question of how to approach the Taliban regime newly installed in Afghanistan, the situation in Kabul could also reshape India’s ties with the US and lead to a more subdued approach to its border conflict ...

A mega spacecraft assembled in orbit is among projects that Chinese researchers have been invited to study, as the country expands plans for future space exploration and long-term crewed missions.The National Natural Science Foundation of China has c...

Hong Kong politics is often described as a contest between the blue and yellow camps. On the blue side are the conservative, pro-establishment forces, many of whom are people disillusioned by the West because of what they see as its growing bias agai...